Category Archives: gardening

It’s camellia season on the Gulf Coast and big, showy blossoms are everywhere. Unlike the azalea’s brief explosion of riotous color followed by ten months of weedy-looking shrubbery, the camellia’s glossy greenery looks robust year round. Some varieties bloom for months and can survive, essentially neglected, for centuries.

But I like them because they are such fun to draw. Simple or heavily ruffled, their flowers range from snowy white to delicate pink to intense crimson — or speckled and spattered combinations of these colors. And their crepe texture is perfect for colored pencil. Here’s a recent preliminary drawing using a dark umber Prismacolor pencil:

And here’s the same drawing, with layers of color added. I used five colors in addition to the umber “foundation drawing” : Crimson, Cream, Chartreuse, Canary Yellow and Dark Green:

…with a new design to be printed on garden flags and greeting cards. An art festival this weekend, a garden show next weekend, then another art festival on the following weekend — after the solitary task of drawing and painting my garden themed illustrations, it’s fun to meet customers face-to-face.

Out in the winter garden, it’s cold and rainy. But on my drawing table, it’s the middle of June and the homegrown tomatoes are ready for picking. I’m halfway through with the new children’s seed package design for a group of young organic farmers out in Sonoma County, California. The open-pollinated heirloom seeds inside the finished package will find their way into the hands of schoolchildren and neighborhood community gardeners. I love being part of this process.

Design work also provides a welcome opportunity to listen to podcasts while I draw and paint. Last week I discovered City Farmer Stories, broadcast from Vancouver. And yesterday, tucked into the newest issue of Organic Gardening between an article on tracking chipmunks and another about peace trees in Hiroshima, was info on three more audio opportunities:

Heritage Radio Network features a smorgasbord of different programs hosted by chefs, farmers, artists and even — according to OG — the occasional artisanal cheesemaker.

I’m not an expert on irrigation, but the cool new rainwater collection system at our local Master Gardeners demonstration plot seems like a no-brainer to me. Worldwide consumption of water is rising fast — twice the rate of the population — but fresh water makes up less than 3 percent of all the planet’s water resources. When a scarce resource falls right out of the sky, it makes sense to harvest it. That’s exactly what the folks at the county demonstration garden are doing.

Fruit trees... demonstrating!

Rainwater can be collected from any relatively clean surface (rooftops and pool covers, for example) and then used for irrigation, flushing the toilet, washing the car, rinsing garden tools — just don’t drink it.

The system at the demonstration garden uses rain gutters on a small outbuilding to capture water:

These gutters capture 160 - 240 gallons per 1" rainfall

Even a tiny toolshed can yield a surprisingly large volume of fresh water. According to a formula from the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, a 10 x 10 foot surface collects approximately 50 gallons for every inch of rainfall. The main tank for the demonstration garden holds 1800 gallons, and it was full:

Next stop after the rooftop: the storage tank

The thick, vertical pipe visible at the corner of the red building is the first flush diverter. It’s a simple device that catches the first flush of water during each rain — the rain that rinses off any dirt, bird droppings, acorns or leaves that might have landed on the roof recently. Once the diverter is full, the remaining water passes over it and runs into the storage tank. See the plug at the bottom of the pipe? That’s where the first flush water can be drained, between rains.

Storage tanks can be made from all kinds of clean containers. .. however, the Cooperative Extension folks warn that you need to be very careful about what has been previously stored in them. New or never-previously-used fuel tanks, fiberglass containers or septic tanks are what they recommend for larger capacity. There are also polyethylene tanks manufactured for use in the sugar industry, which are cheap to buy and easy to rinse for repurposing as water storage.

(We’re down here in a subtropical climate zone, so temperature extremes are never a problem. But in colder climates, exposed storage tanks would need to be durable enough to tolerate water freezing and thawing during the winter. The recommendation is high-density polyethylene, and a domed top or overflow pipe to allow expansion.)

The demonstration garden slopes gently away from the water containment tank, so gravity alone was enough to provide pressure for drip irrigation. But it’s a big garden, so last week a small electric pump was installed at the base of the storage tank. Now the Master Gardener volunteers can sprinkle, mist and hose to their hearts’ content. If you don’t have electricity in the vicinity of your water storage, a gasoline pump will work.

I’m intrigued. I think a set of rain barrels and some spiffy new catchment gutters on the art studio might be a good fall project. After patiently answering my many questions, the County Extension agent gave me some sources of additional, more detailed information. I’ve listed them below. Happy harvesting!

Red Acre, a reddish-purple cabbage which The Perfect Man uses to make coleslaw. (Anybody know a good pickled red cabbage recipe? I’d like to try it.)

Early Flat Dutch, which makes enormous shiny pale-green heads weighing in around 8-10 pounds apiece. The heads are very tightly packed, as well, making it harder for hungry insects to gain access.

All three produced well — despite the vagaries of our coastal weather — without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. We planted them in late September, in rotation behind tomatoes and green beans. Cabbages are happiest in rich, moist soil, so we added an inch of fresh compost (made from a well-rotted blend of leaves and kitchen scraps) and hoed it in before planting.

We have a big garden and I have a strong aversion to gasoline-powered tillers, so everything gets a heavy hay mulch to prevent weeds, preserve moisture, deter fire ants and provide a nice dark habitat for earthworms. (If you’re still getting weeds, your hay isn’t thick enough.) One layer of mulch will last a full year — two crop cycles — before it needs replacement, and we just roll it back like a big brown carpet to add compost or set transplants.

Our cabbages like the mulch carpet method. They are shallow-rooted and thirsty, so the protective layer keeps them moist. And here’s an interesting bonus: among the brassica clan, the tendency to bolt is affected more by root temperature than by air temperature. Mulch insulates the cabbage roots when we get those freaky 75-degree spells.

Once harvested, cabbages in our warmish winter climate need to be processed quickly. The Perfect Man ramped up the shredding-bagging-and-freezing operation to the point where the motor on our overworked food processor burned up. Cabbage-loving relatives and neighbors carried off recycled grocery bags bulging with leafy orbs. We experimented with some new cabbage recipes. Now they’ve all been put away, given away or eaten… and we’re prepping the beds for the next occupants.

Is there anything prettier than cruciferous vegetables in the morning dew? We are awash in a rising tide of broccoli and cabbages this week, as the winter garden reaches maturity. Neighbors and kinfolks are handed bags of tasty green stuff as they walk out our door.

But the wonder crop of the winter garden, as far as I’m concerned, is kale. I first tasted the tender little green about 20 years ago, when an elderly neighbor told me that kale was her secret for staying youthful and energetic.

“I cook a big pot of it once a week,” she confided. “Never been sick a day in my life. Never took a vitamin pill, either.” At 73, she was still tossing hay bales into the back of a farm truck like a teenager. I immediately ordered a packet of seeds.

Each fall, we plant a small bed of Russian kale — a sweetly mild variety that grows rapidly and abundantly right through winter. We sow it thickly, and it’s up within days. At the two-week mark, we thin the bed and eat the tender baby plants in mixed salad. After that, we harvest the mature leaves weekly as new shoots continuously grow up from beneath the dense, eighteen-inch canopy of ragged tops.

Here in the deep South, most people cook kale the same way they cook collard greens: stew it into submission along with a big hunk of ham bone. But (a) kale cooks much more quickly than the bigger, coarser greens, and (b) we’re vegetarians around here. So we simmer it briefly in vegetable stock, then use it in our favorite quiche or pasta recipes. It’s very tasty.

Or, to warm ourselves during a south Alabama cold snap, we make a pot of incavolata. It’s a hearty, rustic Italian soup made of kale and white beans. Seasoned with garlic and sage, then thickened with cornmeal, it is a wonderful winter meal. Here’s my favorite version, from my dogeared copy of the Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant cookbook:

4 cups chopped kale

4 large garlic cloves, minced

1 tbsp olive oil

6 cups cooked cannellini (white kidney beans) or 4 cans

5 cups vegetable stock, or water from cooking beans

2 heaping tsp tomato paste

6 fresh sage leaves or 1/2 tsp dried sage

1 tsp salt

freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup finely ground cornmeal

2 tbsp lemon juice

freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Remove the stems from the kale and coarsely chop the leaves. Soak the leaves in a bowl of cold water while you prepare the soup. In a soup pot, saute’ the garlic in the olive oil for about a minute. Add half the cooked beans and part of the stock to the pot. Puree’ the rest of the beans and stock in a blender or food processor along with the tomato paste and sage. Stir the pureed beans into the soup. Add salt and pepper to taste. Drain the kale. Mix it into the soup and simmer for at least half an hour, until tender. Mix the cornmeal with the lemon juice and enough water to make one cup. Pour this paste slowly into the simmering soup while stirring constantly to prevent lumps from forming. Simmer the soup for another 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Taste for salt and pepper and adjust the seasonings. Serve immediately, topped with freshly grated Parmesan. Enjoy!

A few more good things about kale: bugs dont like it. It’s packed with Vitamin A and antioxidants. And finally, it is a terrific “green manure” crop when you’re through eating it. It will grow happily through our cool winters, but the party’s over around late March, when daytime temperatures climb into the 80s again. That’s when we plow the remaining plants into the ground, where it rapidly breaks down… to the delight of our earthworm friends.